


Beginning to Live

by thedevilchicken



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Bad Guys Made Them Do It, F/M, Time Loop, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-17 07:28:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17555990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Soon she will know why she's here, or else she'll never know.





	Beginning to Live

**Author's Note:**

  * For [M J Holyoke (wholeyolk)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wholeyolk/gifts).



> This is intended as a fusion with the movie _Looper_ , per my recipient's excellent prompts - time-looping assassins in Westeros/Essos were just too beautiful a notion to pass up!

He knows two things more clearly than he knows any other thing: she is the one he was meant to bring here, and his name is not Jaqen H'ghar. 

She has the dagger in her hands. They call it a ceremonial dagger and he supposes this is a ceremony of sorts, but there is nothing elaborate about the blade, or the hilt, or any part of it at all. Its wrapped leather grip is damp from recent washing and has a smell of soap that not quite covers something rotten; she wrinkles her nose at it but she doesn't shy away. It is a practical weapon, and she is a practical young woman. He has given it to her so that she might put it to its purpose. 

What she must do is simple: she must hold the tip of the dagger to the chamber wall. The wall is before her with a great stone circle that stands three inches proud out of it, unadorned - no runes, no sigils, no letters edged in gilt - but it's still meaningful. The surface of the night-black rock inside that circle has been polished so smooth it's glassy like a huge, dark mirror. Hundreds of years of moments just like this have worn an indent in the stone, as deep as his forefinger right down to the knuckle and twice as wide; she must slide the blade into it, and hold it there, and wait.

What she must do is simple, but the choice is not an easy one. The choice is not easy, but refusing is not without consequence. If she doesn't do this, the Faceless Men won't have her. If they won't have her, she must die for the Many-Faced God. 

Jaqen does not want her to die. He imagines her raising the knife and holding it there as if at any moment she might plunge it deep into the stone, and he almost believes she could do exactly that. He imagines the knife, waiting, nocked in that notch in the wall like an arrow to a bowstring. 

He wills her to do it, but she doesn't move. 

\---

He could say he knew her from the start, but he didn't. Saying so would be a lie, and he is many things though not a liar. 

They left King's Landing through one of its seven great gates and from there they took the Kingsroad north. He understood that they were heading for the Wall, and the Wall was not exactly Braavos, but as his work had been completed the detour was of little matter. The trip had at least removed him from the city's black cells and he thought it might be just as well to bide his time in Yoren's cage awhile before he made good his escape and returned home across the Narrow Sea. After all, the boy called Arry seemed familiar, and he had long since learned to trust his instincts. 

The cage suited well enough. At the start, it was almost restful; he watched the Westerosi countryside roll by between the bars and though Rorge and Biter did not make good company, he had let them see him change his face before they left the cells and so they left him be. The northern crow that led the way knew his work much better than most and so for a while Jaqen was not concerned when they passed archers up in trees protecting farms from would-be filchers and entire villages heading south with whatever they could carry. But the time came when Jaqen saw that Yoren's naive old belief that the Night's Watch could stand apart from war would just not hold water. Behind the bars, and behind a smile, he began to worry. That worry began to gnaw at him. 

Then, one night, locked into a holdfast with an enemy at the gate, circumstances proved that worry right. The men outside put the holdfast to the torch and Jaqen saw his own death coming in those flames. He would die there before he could even try to reach Braavos. He would be dead before he could reach the House of Black and White and so his loop would be broken. He knew what that meant. Death didn't scare him, but failing his god did. 

He could say he knew her from the start, but that would be a lie. As time had passed, he'd thought it might be her, but _she_ was a boy named Arry; the more he'd watched, however, the more he'd seen, and the more he'd seen, the more he'd known. Arry was not a boy, or else he was the strangest one he'd ever known. 

Still, girl or boy, he had not been certain Arry was the one whose acquaintance he'd been waiting so long to make. He hadn't been certain, at least not until she saved his life that night, then disappeared.

At Harrenhal, they met again, and he told her that three lives were owed, and he told her she should name the three. She took him at his word and named the first two; with her voice tickling at his ear so the serving girl wouldn't hear her, he thought he knew why it was she'd been chosen. But then, when she named the third, he had new questions about that. 

"A girl," he said, down on his knees, "she makes a jest."

"You swore," she replied. "The gods heard you swear." 

He knew she was right. He knew what he'd done, and knew what he must do. "The gods did hear," he said. And he would have done it, if she hadn't been persuaded she should take it back. 

He sent her to the kitchens, and he went to his work. And, as he moved through the shadows of the courtyard, he wondered to himself: _Do I always make this choice?_

The priests of the Many-Faced God say each life a man leads is different from the last. That night, he was not so sure.

\---

The dagger lies across her palms.

He remembers how he felt when he was handed that knife, many years ago. He recalls the weight of it in his hand and the chill of his bare feet against the worn old flagstones. He recalls the instructions, and how eager he was to follow them.

He was very young when he was brought here, starving, barely taller than the handles on the great ebony-and-weirwood doors standing at the entrance, and he thought the firelit dark inside the House of Black and White might swallow him up just like the Many-Faced God. He remembers being scared that they might sacrifice him, but they took him in and gave him things to eat and drink instead. They saved his life. They gave him purpose. He wanted to be one of them.

The tip of the knife went easily into the notch worn into the great black circle. He could feel the knife's sharp edges scrape against the stone like he was making his mark there, too. He remembers wondering how long it would take until they knew if he was meant to join them, but knowing came before the completion of that thought. One moment, all that stood before him was his own reflection in the firelit stone; the next, in the blinking of his eye, a man appeared. The dagger was lodged into the man's heart. The initiation was complete.

He doesn't know how old he was, but he was young. He doesn't know who left him there or why, but he is grateful for it. He doesn't know what they called him before the day that he arrived, but has has no need of names. It was easy for him to be no one, because he had never been anyone; he knows it doesn't come as easily to her, but still he hopes. 

"Jaqen?" she says, with the knife in her hands, resting across both palms. That is not his name but he doesn't say so. He tells himself doesn't have a name. 

"A girl must choose," he says. Soon she will know why she's here, or else she'll never know. But he can't tell her anything. 

The choice is hers alone, and she makes it. 

\---

"She's mine," the soldier said. "I saw her first. Fair's fair." 

The man reminded Jaqen of Rorge, which was not a welcome memory considering all he'd known of Rorge. He was hairy and squat and lacked most of his nose, and he held Arya down against the beer-soaked inn table, but her eyes weren't on the man; they were on him. So she'd know he was a friend, he was wearing the face of Jaqen H'ghar. He'd hoped the next time he would wear it for her would be standing in the House of Black and White, but that was yet to come.

It was the first time she had seen him in five years or more. She'd changed but then again she hadn't: she'd grown older and taller, yes, hair longer and curves just very slightly fuller, but she had the same defiant set to her jaw. That fact only riled the man who held her further.

"A man will fight for her," said Jaqen. He rested one hand on the hilt of his sword at his waist. 

"For this?" Arya struggled again, and the unpleasant man shoved her already bruised face back down against the table. "You sure?"

"A man is certain." He drew the sword an inch or two. "A man will win."

"A man's an arse if he thinks that." 

When the soldier glanced to the doorway, Jaqen knew he was outnumbered. In the confines of the small inn's small room, against eight armed men, he might win and he might lose, and he might lose her in the process. He frowned.

"I tell you what," the soldier said, with a broad, drunken sweep of his free hand. "You fuck her for me while we watch and you can both leave living after." 

Perhaps he should have fought, but he didn't; he took his cue from her. When the soldier said, "You hear me, girl? You make a fuss and I'll have your head off," she looked at Jaqen as she nodded, and he didn't think she meant for him to draw his sword. She didn't move when the soldier stepped away and tumbled backwards into a nearby chair. She didn't move as Jaqen stepped in close and ran his hands over the hips of her too-large trousers. When he unbuckled her belt, they came down easily. When he unbuckled his own belt, the soldier and his comrades all jeered loudly. 

After he had stroked his cock till he was hard and thrust himself inside her, the soldiers grew bored quickly. He made it quick, for both their sakes. And when he was done, the soldiers waved the two of them away and went back to their drinking. He took her upstairs, to his rented room, and he turned his back while she cleaned herself.

"A man wishes to apologize," he said, with his eyes fixed on the knotty wooden door. "Though certain things were necessary, still a man regrets." 

He heard bare footsteps on the creaking floorboards. He felt her hands against his back, and felt his own heart leap. When he turned, she was naked. She blushed, but that same old defiance shone hard in her eyes.

"A man might regret," she said, "but a girl does not."

They parted ways the morning after, but he wore Jaqen H'ghar for eight more days. It helped him to remember her.

As he made his way home to Braavos, he wondered how many times they'd been there. He wondered how many more times they would, too.

\---

She drops the knife. It clatters against the floor, and it should echo but it barely makes a sound, or else if it does he doesn't hear it. 

Giving back the knife should mean the end of it, or the beginning of the end of it at least. Still, in a flash of bloody light, a body falls in through the circle that an instant ago just was not there. He has seen this before but she hasn't; she jumps back, even more confused perhaps by this than he is. Giving back the knife should mean that this can't happen. _She_ shouldn't be here. It's the knife against the wall that should trigger it and nothing else.

He goes to her, to the woman on the floor. Her hair is braided into a crown about her head, steel-gray instead of brown, but he knows her face. He goes down on his knees. He sits on the stone floor and he eases her up and he holds her, sick inside, as she looks at him. 

"Jaqen," she says. 

He smooths a few stray wisps of hair back from her face that have escaped her braids. 

"Do it," she says. 

She hasn't looked away from him, but she knows he has the fallen dagger in his hand. She's been here before, after all, and has seen this place, and has seen this moment, has seen _this_ , though she can't have seen it. A loop is not a loop unless it's closed. 

He looks up at Arya, whose eyes are round as saucers. If she had held the dagger to the wall, it would have pierced this woman's heart. He did that, twenty years ago, so small that the man who came had to grip his arm to keep the knife from pulling out too soon and breaking their connection. In that moment, years ago, he saw her face. 

If Arya had held the dagger to the wall, it would have pierced this woman's heart, and that was her initiation. She hasn't killed her, and he knows that he must take her life. But he asks himself, _what if I don't?_

"Do it," the woman says. She wraps her hand around his wrist. She brings the knifepoint to her chest. It's not hard to press it home and snuff her out. 

There is a raised step by the wall where the postulant must stand. There is a semicircle carved down into it, like a basin, and from it three narrow furrows run down to the edge of the glossy black pool. The woman's blood flows down into it, to join all those who went before and will come after, and Arya comes closer. She goes down on her knees beside him.

"She was me," she says, in a whisper like one day in another place, by another pool. 

He nods. She was. All postulants agree to kill themselves one day when they begin, not knowing it will happen on the first day or it never will. If no one arrives there to meet them, they know it wasn't meant to be; if no one arrives, either their future self has died before they reached the circle, or else the Many-Faced God has simply led them here to die. 

She hasn't fulfilled her part of the agreement, and he knows he's duty bound to kill her. He wipes the blood from the blade against his sleeve. If he doesn't end her life as he's instructed, he will not be permitted his turn at the circle. If he doesn't end her life, his younger self will die here in this room before he's even ten years old. It means something to him to be a servant of his god, and to serve his god forever is the highest honor he could ever know. 

She doesn't look at the knife in his hand, but he knows she knows it's there. 

"You have to kill me, don't you," she says. 

"Yes," he replies, because there is no way to soften what it is he has to do.

She closes her eyes. All she says then is, "Jaqen." 

He knows two things more clearly than he knows any others: he was meant to bring her here, and his name is not Jaqen H'ghar. Until this moment, he believed both of these things were true, but the truth is he's never managed to tell her that _Jaqen H'ghar_ is not his name. The truth is, he is no longer no one. He has a face, and he has a name. She is the one who gave them to him.

He drops the blade. He takes her hands. She opens her eyes and she frowns at him; he stands and he helps her to her feet. 

"A girl will follow," he says. "A girl will be quiet as a mouse." 

She nods. He leads the way. 

He knows that he will never see this place again, at least not in this lifetime. But she reaches out to squeeze his hand, and he can't find it in him to regret. 

It means something to him to be a servant of his god. But she means something, too.

\---

He meets a boy named Arry while in a cage on the road to the Wall. The boy seems familiar, and he wonders.

He meets a girl named Weasel by the melted towers of Harrenhal. He has a coin in his pocket he knows is meant for her. 

He meets a girl named Arya on the road to Widow's Watch. She puts her hands on his borrowed face and says a borrowed name. Soon, he finds it hard to let them go.

The priests of the Many-Faced God say each life a man leads is different from the last. But sometimes he wonders if that's true at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the _Meditations_ of Marcus Aurelius: "It is not death that a man should fear, but never beginning to live."


End file.
